First Week of the Fourth Grade

Courtney has had a wonderful first week of school! We have prayed long and heavy for this year and it looks like God has answered once again.

I had promised her that I would walk her into the school everyday this week. Today as we walked down the hall she said, "I think everyone is looking at me because you are walking with me"! I guess I won't be walking her in anymore!

Where does this stuff come from?

These first two photos show my empty scrap room.





























I am very blessed to have a wonderful scrap area. But it has become a catch all place. I decided that the only way I could get it organized was to start over. So I pulled everything out of the room. This picture shows what came out of that room! Where does this stuff come from? It is like it mulitplies overnight.


Once I waded through it all I ended up with 3 bags of trash. I have moved it all back into my scrap room but I am still organizing it. So far I have gone through my scraps and reduced that pile greatly! I have gathered all of my photos into one place and am in the process of organizing them. I think I am going to put them all into slip in photo albums. I am going to use all black and get a bookcase of some sort to put them on. I put all of my completed scrapbooks on a shelf downstairs. Why didn't I do that before?! After getting my photos in order, I will start going through my scrap supplies. I am considering separating all of my embellishments by color but I'm not sure about that yet.

I will post photos of what it looks like once everything is in place.

Science projects

Courtney is studying landforms in science at school. They were assigned a project to make a 3D presentation of any landform. So we paper mached, painted and glued (at the last minute, of course)! Courtney's project shows a mountain, waterfall, river and valley.

#4

Our baby turned 4 yesterday. We had a great party with friends and family. Kirsten was happy the whole day. She was lavished with love from everyone. As usual, I am overwhelmed with how fast time flies!

Baby Ellie

My sister had her baby on Tuesday. Her name is Ellie Nicole, she was 7lbs 10 oz and 19" long. She is perfect! (Better pictures to come soon!)

A word

I have a confession - I am a lurker of blogs. I have a list of about 10 blogs that I check in on everyday. I never leave a comment, well, maybe once or twice. That's bad I know. Mark and Jessica say that it is creepy that I "stalk" these people. Truth is, I'm nosey and these blogs are interesting!

So, one of the blogs I frequent is the blog of Ali Edwards. It is aliedwards.typepad.com. I need someone to show me how to add links. Anyway, last year she had this idea to pick a word as your focus for the year. Sort of a new year's resolution in one word. My word for last year was simplify. Since we moved into a house twice the size of our other one, I don't think I grasped the concept of simplify! LOL!

This year my word is devotion. My first thought was that it simply meant being faithful in my devotion time with God. But over the past two weeks I have been really trying to figure out what "devotion" means. Websters says that devotion is

1 a: religious fervor b: an act of prayer or private worship —usually used in plural c: a religious exercise or practice other than the regular corporate worship of a congregation2 a: the act of devoting b: the fact or state of being ardently dedicated and loyal 3obsolete : the object of one's devotion

My first and most important goal for this year is to strengthen my relationship with God. I want to study more and understand God and His purpose for my life. My hope is that through a more powerful relationship with God I will be able to strengthen my relationships with everyone else. It seems "devotion" is a good word to focus on!

What is your word (or focus) for this year?